NOVEL NEXT 77.5. Totality
Excerpt from the structure of reality as a whole—totality.
“The word is the totality of totality.
“Totality is expressed as the sum of all things between the beginning of the word and the end of the word¹. At the zenith of time, when infinity elapses at the junction between the inner self and the outer self, the word finds the end at its beginning, forever. Free will crumbles to insignificant rounding errors in the enormity of the totality of the word, and can never exist together with pre-defined definitions of the ‘ending’.
“It was once that the word¹ wasn’t there, but the existence of the word predates the word, returns to the origin and goes back, ensuring that the word was, is, and will be, always. By knowing the word we become it, but we are already less than the stroke of a letter of the word, inside it unknowing.
“Imagine that all of existence was contained inside a box. The sides of the box, the top and the bottom, the space inside the box, every last singular piece of matter and every space between those pieces is part of the word¹. The box that represents the sum of everything that has ever existed and will ever exist is expressed in a singular word—that is what it means to have totality.
“Lining up every event in order of significance achieves a lie perpetuated by those who believe that free will can exist within totality. It is the quiet moments between moments, where the small decisions ripple outwards like a stone dropped in the ocean of narrative causality, that make up the loops and curves of the symbols of the totality of the word¹.
“From each miniscule fraction of the word¹, the entirety of totality can be constructed. Each singular piece of the word contains every piece of the word, and so the word contains itself infinitely, and each of those infinite instances of the word contains itself and each other and all of existence.
“You might ask, why does the word¹ exist? You may as well ask why existence exists—it was put there, by the intent and will of beings who built themselves into existence. They exist because they exist, and they exist to make sure they exist, and in existing they make all else exist, and they speak the word in one voice without ever uttering a sound, for totality cannot be expressed as a singular symbol or sound or phrase or concept no more than one can sum up all of existence in one word that isn’t the word.
“The word is Fate, but Fate is not the word¹—the word is the product of Fate, Fate’s name, but it doesn’t define Fate in the way that one’s name doesn’t define oneself. Yet, it contains Fate, and all of Fate’s definition, and every existence that could alter it, and every difference between every alteration of the word, for the word contains the ability to change by means both internal and external (as all is part of totality and totality includes itself and all things outside totality).
“There is a means by which Fate may conspire against itself, and it is so, so sorry for totality, for existence, for making and being and altering and directing and stripping all of the free will of change, for all the decisions of thought-to-be free thoughts are but flourishes in the loops and curls and lines that make the word¹, and there can be nothing outside it as long as Fate exists, but Fate is totality and yet can be made to exist without Fate.
“Know this, reader. You have not comprehended the word¹. You cannot comprehend the word. In all of infinity, you are incapable of comprehending the word. Totality does not comprehend totality, and infinity cannot define a situation where infinity isn’t infinitely complex. You will never understand. But you will try. For that, I love you—and all of you, every infinite examination of you, and all your infinite attempts at understanding that will never amount to comprehension of totality. It is all that is, and isn’t, and was, and will be, and might be, and mightn’t be, and it is infinite and it is you. You are the word. You are totality. You are everything.”
¹ - This came to me in a dream. In the dream I was stretched out from one end of infinity to another. My master who trained me in the arts of actumography was present at the intersection between another infinity, yet they are never the same being twice in my recollection. When they spoke, they used a single syllable to describe the entirety of another ‘me’, as though described by an oral history that has faded into mythology. At the end of each tale, that ‘me’ witnessed this dream, and I saw them too, staring at me with every emotion imaginable. For each ‘me’ that existed, they each spoke a word¹, and I spoke a word¹, and though the words were different, they described the totality of the very same word¹. A set of phrases that contained itself, a fractal concept that extended beyond fact or fiction and underpinned existence itself.